her mouth.

"Oh, Great Barran--" she chuckled, "listen to the pretty fool! Our
brother will do this--our brother will do that. _Our_ brother will
lick the country of Retz as clean as a dog licks a platter. Know you
not, silly fool, that both your brothers are long since dead and under
sod in the castle of your city of Edinburgh. I tell you my master set
his little finger upon them and crushed them like flies on a summer
chamber wall!"

Maud Lindesay rose to her feet as La Meffraye spoke these words.

"It is not true," she cried; "you lie to us as you have done from the
first. The Earl of Douglas is not dead!"

It was now little Margaret who showed the spirit of her race, and put
out her hand to clasp that of her elder comrade.

"Do not let her even know that she has power to hurt us with her
words," she whispered low to Maud Lindesay. Then she spoke aloud:

"If that which you say be true and my brothers are dead--there are yet
Douglases. Our cousins will deliver us."

"Your cousins have entered into your possessions," jeered the hag; "it
is indeed a likely thing that they will desire your return to Scotland
in order to rob them of that which is their own."

"We are not afraid," said the little maid, stoutly; "there are many in
the land of the Scots who would gladly die to help us."

"Aye, that is it. They shall die--all die. Three of them died
yester-even, torn to pieces by my lord's wolves. Fine, swift,
four-footed guardians of the Castle of Machecoul--La Meffraye's
friends! And one young cock below there of the same gang hath gone
even now to my lord's chamber. He hath mounted the stairs he will
never descend."

"Well," said the Maid of Galloway, "even so--we are not afraid. We can
die, as died our friends."

"Die--die!" cried the hag, sharply, angered at the child's
persistence. "'Tis easy to talk. To snuff a candle out is to die.
Poof, 'tis done! But the young and beautiful like you, my dearies, do
not so die at Machecoul. No; rather as a dying candle flickers
out--falls low, and rises again, so they die. As wine oozes drop by
drop from the needle-punctured wine-skin--so shall you die, weeping,
beseeching, drained to the white like a dripping calf in the shambles,
yet at the same time reddened and shamed with the shame deadly and
unnameable. Then La Meffraye, whom now you disdain to answer with a
look, will wash her hands in your life's blood and laugh as your tears
fall slowly upon the latchet of he